A New Dreyfus Case?

Published:First published inListok “Pravdy”, July 19 (6), 1917.

      Published according to the text inListok “Pravdy”.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 25,

      page166.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.  

      2002You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Aresome of the “leaders” of our General Staff
      planning to re-enact the Dreyfus
      case[1]?

Thisidea is suggested by the outrageously insolent and
      monstrous slander published inZhivoye Slovoand
      analysed by us in detail elsewhere.

Inthe Dreyfus case, the French General Staff made it self sadly
      and disgracefully famous throughout the world by resorting to
      wrong, unfair and downright criminal (base) measures to indict
      Dreyfus.

OurGeneral Staff showed their hand in a “case”
      against the Bolsheviks, doing it publicly for the first time, I
      think, through—this is strange and significant and
      incredible—Zhivoye Slovo, a Black Hundred rag,
      which printed an obvious slander about Lenin being a spy. The
      report begins as follows:

“TheChief of Staff of the Supreme Command sent the record
      of interrogation [of Yermolenko] to the War Minister, with his
      letter No. 3719 of May 16, 1917.”

“TheChief of Staff of the Supreme Command sent the record
      of interrogation [of Yermolenko] to the War Minister, with his
      letter No. 3719 of May 16, 1917.”

Isit conceivable—if the case is handled properly at
      all—that records of interrogation belonging to the
      General Staff should be published in the Black Hundred pressbeforeinvestigation is instituted andbeforethe suspects are arrested?

TheGeneral Staff is in charge of intelligence. This is beyond
      question. But how can an intelligence service function if a
      document dispatched on May 16 and received by Kerensky long ago
      is put in circulation by a Black Hundred rag instead ofKerensky?

Inwhat way does this differ, in point of fact, from the methods
      used in the Dreyfus case?

[1]Dreyfuscase—the trial of the Jew Dreyfus, a French General Staff
officer, whom the reactionary monarchists among the French
military, bent on provocation, falsely charged in 1894 with
espionage and high treason. The French reactionaries took advantage of
the framed-up indictment of Dreyfus, who was sentenced to life
imprisonment, to foment anti-Semitism and attack the republican
regime and democratic liberties. When, in 1898, the socialists and
progressive spokesmen of bourgeois democracy, including EmileZola, Jean Jaurès and Anatole Franco, started a campaign for a
re-examination of the Dreyfus case, the latter assumed a markedly
political character. The country split into two camps over it,
with the republicans and democrats on one side and the bloc of
monarchists, clericals, anti-Semites and nationalists on the other.
In 1899, under pressure from public opinion, Dreyfus was pardoned
and released. In 1906, he was acquitted by the Court of Cassation
and was reinstated in the Army.